The small Arabian country rocketed up a recent ranking. How? Believing - or investigating - any individual measurement in reputational security or soft power is usually a problem. In a space that is increasingly, often usefully though sometimes problematically, awash in rankings and indexes, the aggregate big picture is more important than a single data point. That said, sometimes a single data point screams curiosity. So it was for us belatedly sifting through the World Comp

Recent study tabs EM entrants' over-performance; converting it on a regional and global basis is the next step.